November 6, 2026
The Story Behind 'The Graveyard of Champions': A Chiropractor, a Horse Racing Family, and the Voice of Josie
The Story Behind 'The Graveyard of Champions': A Chiropractor, a Horse Racing Family, and the Voice of Josie
Category: Books by Dr. Kim
Saratoga Springs in August has its own kind of theater. The grand hotels fill, familiar rituals return, and racing season brings the town to life. In The Graveyard of Champions: A Novel of Saratoga, that polished summer world has a shadow: money moving through the horse-racing business, looking for a way to appear clean.
Listen to the opening, narrated in my own digital voice:
At the center is Marco, a gifted horseman who receives a warm offer from one of Saratoga’s old families. It looks like an invitation into a world of opportunity. But Marco recognizes the shape of the trap closing around him, and must decide what he is willing to risk to get out of it.
The story comes to us through Josie, a plainspoken country vet whose voice gives the novel its distinctive perspective. She observes the people and the horses without fuss, and her matter-of-fact way of telling things makes the world around her feel vivid and immediate. Josie is not looking to dress up the truth. She tells it as she sees it.
“The greatest horses who ever lived came here to lose. So, it turns out, do good men.”
That line holds the book’s central tension: Saratoga’s celebrated history of surprises, and the human cost of getting caught up in a game whose stakes reach beyond the track.
Why this story
A horse-racing family saga may seem like a departure for Dr. Kimberly Carlucci, who has spent 30 years in clinical practice. But one thread connects her work and her fiction: listening to people’s stories.
Over the years, Carlucci has heard how pressure, trust, loyalty, and quiet decisions shape a person’s life. In this novel, those same forces play out in a different setting, among horsemen, powerful families, and a town transformed by racing season. The result is a story about more than the spectacle of the races. It is about the choices people make when a welcome offer comes with a cost.
The novel is fiction, separate from Carlucci’s clinical work. Its world belongs to Saratoga, its racing season, and the people drawn into Marco’s story.
Josie’s voice, and the audiobook
Josie’s narration is one of the pleasures of the book. Her plainspoken voice offers a steady vantage point on events that grow increasingly complicated. She brings the reader close to the town and its characters without losing sight of the larger story unfolding around them.
The Spotify audiobook is narrated in Dr. Carlucci’s own digital voice, giving listeners a version of the story that sounds like the author is reading it to them. It runs just under three hours.
About the author
Dr. Kimberly Carlucci, DC, ICCSP, writes fiction alongside her clinical work. The Graveyard of Champions brings her to Saratoga Springs for a story of racing, family, ambition, and the consequences of a choice that first looks like good fortune.
Find your edition
Choose the format that suits you:
For an easy way to find every format, visit Dr. Carlucci’s Linktree. You can also search Graveyard of Champions Carlucci on Amazon.
And if you’ve read or listened to the novel, Dr. Carlucci would be grateful if you left an honest review on Amazon. Reviews help independent authors more than most people realize, and a few words about what stayed with you can help another reader discover the book. No pressure, just a warm thank-you for taking the time.
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